Historical- thrillery-factual fiction

Recently, Adam Mars Jones accused me in the Observer of being in some ways worse than Hitler, because at least Hitler had an excuse for idolising the German upper classes, namely race science, which I didn’t. I was outraged, and seriously considered suing him. I have since calmed down a little and see now that novels set in the recent past are particularly prone to judgments which are more about the history than the fiction, and sometimes even confuse the author with the fictional voice.  This was the point Allan Massie made so eloquently in these pages a few weeks ago.      

Dancing with Eva raises some of these questions. It is based on the account of the last days of the Hitler bunker given by Traudl Junge, Hitler’s secretary; Alan Judd insinuates into the story an account of a fictional secretary to Eva Braun, Edith Ashburnham, long since married to a British officer, now dead, and settled into her husband’s house in the shires with her housekeeper, Mrs Hoath.